Having My Own Back

One thing we learned on vacation is that when you’re on a cruise, sooner or later someone is going to talk you into interacting with seaweed.

During our day “at sea” we decided to splurge on a couples massage.   Because we Ache All Over, the woman at the spa recommended the “Aqua Massage,” which involves being wrapped in seaweed before receiving a deep tissue massage.  She assured us that this would remove all the toxins from our bodies, and basically cure everything that ails us, including our arthritis.

Now I envisioned being wrapped in huge leaves of seaweed (like a California roll), but actually we were covered in a seaweed paste and then wrapped in what looked like a huge piece of tin foil (like baked potatoes) before receiving our massage.

After the massage, we got our “evaluations.”  Sasa, my no-nonsense Slovenian massage therapist, went first.  I could tell from the look on her face that she was about to deliver bad news.

 

“Your back is….” Sasa paused, struggling to find the word, “a disaster.”

A disaster?  Really? Wasn’t this a bit of an overstatement?  Perhaps Sasa did not understand the meaning of the word.  I explained to Sasa that she must be mistaken:  my official diagnosis by my physical therapist for my neck and back was that it was a “mess,” not a “disaster.”

 

There’s a world of difference there.  A “mess” is a cluttered room that needs to be straightened.  The Titanic, the Hindenberg, Hurricane Katrina, 9/11: now THOSE are disasters.  Not my poor little aching back.

Besides, if she thought my back was a disaster now, she should have seen it back in January, before six weeks of physical therapy and three weeks of treatment at the chiropractor.  What would she have called it then?  A catastrophe?  A nuclear holocaust?

 

I told her about the amazing reduction in pain and increased movement I had been experiencing, and about how my treatment with the chiropractor was an ongoing process.  I was about 4000% better than I had been and I was very optimistic that someday my back would be elevated from being a mess to being merely problematic.

Sasa wasn’t buying it, because (as it turns out) she was trying to sell me something.  She became animated and excited when she told me that she had the only answer to my problems.  If I put this seaweed bath powder into my bath I could soak in the same seaweed solution I had just had slathered on me.  If I did this regularly for long enough and used two other products, all my problems with my back would be solved!  Just for good measure she also had a cream that I could rub on my knees to rid me of my arthritis.  Furthermore, my husband needed all these products, too, even the knee cream although he has never had any problems with his knees.  The cost of all these products would total about $1200.

You know I’m not really the soak-in-a-seaweed-bath-several-times-week type of person, especially not at those prices. I decided to take my chances with my chiropractor, and all his adjustments and subjugations.  And if I had a couple of extra thousand dollars to spend on stuff to fix my back, I’d buy one of those lumbar back tables that he has in his office, which is kind of like lying on a firm wave that massages your spine, but without the water or the seaweed.